The Dow’s Year-to-Date Losers

Year to date, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES: ^DJI) is up more than 6.84% as the bulls have rallied in 2013. Most will credit the fiscal cliff for the Dow’s impressive run this year. As many investors feared that the U.S. was going to fall off the cliff, they held tight to their cash and waited to see if the politicians in Washington would reach a deal. Since they did, a large amount of money began to be deployed, and the pent-up buying demand has pushed shares and, therefore, markets higher thus far.

But investors are again becoming wary of the markets,…

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Year to date, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES: ^DJI) is up more than 6.84% as the bulls have rallied in 2013. Most will credit the fiscal cliff for the Dow’s impressive run this year. As many investors feared that the U.S. was going to fall off the cliff, they held tight to their cash and waited to see if the politicians in Washington would reach a deal. Since they did, a large amount of money began to be deployed, and the pent-up buying demand has pushed shares and, therefore, markets higher thus far.

But investors are again becoming wary of the markets, and buying pressure has slowed or even reversed with some stocks. There are two culprits at play: increased concerns about what the Federal Reserve plans to do with its quantitative-easing programs, and sequestration. The automatic government spending cuts, which were part of the fiscal cliff and just kicked down the road, will now go into effect on 1 March if the politicians can’t come to an agreement. Both of these events will have a major effect on the markets in the future, while some of their influence can already be seen.

Who has been affectedBank of America (NYSE: BAC) has dealt with a number of issues over the past year and looks as if it’s now stronger than ever. The stock gained more than 100% last year, and most observers would give a lot of the credit to CEO Brian Moynihan. But this past week, shares dropped by 4.9% after an SEC filing showed that Moynihan received $12.1 million in compensation in 2012, a 73% increase from 2011.

Sure, that’s a huge jump, but the company’s stock more than doubled last year. The stock fell into the red for 2013 last week, and Bank of America is now down 1.46% for the year.

Shares of Alcoa (NYSE: AA), meanwhile, were cut down by 7.29% last week, leaving the stock now down 0.46% year to date. These shares have been on a roller coaster lately. Two weeks ago they were higher by more than 4%. The cause for the recent decline was the same reason the company has struggled over the past year: The price of aluminum is dropping as stockpiles of the metal around the world continue to grow.

Finally, after shares fell by 3.31% this past week, the year-to-date performance forIntel (NASDAQ: INTC) isn’t looking so good, down 0.97% in 2013. Nothing particularly bad happened to the chip manufacturer this week, so the declining share price may have been part of an industry-wide shift as investors traded out of a number of technology stocks to make room for Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) . The personal-computer manufacturer that’s in the midst of a turnaround story saw its shares rise 14.35% this past week. The stock is now up more than 34% year to date, making it the best-performing Dow component so far in 2013 after being the worst in 2012.

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The information provided is for general information purposes only and is not intended to be personalised investment or financial advice. This article was written by Matt Thalman. Matt is a contributor at fool.com, and this article was originally published on fool.com. Matt owns shares of Bank of America, and The Motley Fool owns shares of Intel and Bank of America.

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